


Comfort Reading

by Eigon



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:20:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27992907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eigon/pseuds/Eigon
Summary: I'm a bookseller, and I got thinking about Aziraphale's collection....
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), original female characters - Relationship
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Comfort Reading

It was all becoming real at last.  
Crowley and Aziraphale had finally decided on the cottage of their dreams on the South Downs, and were just waiting for the human couple to move out (there was a chain involved). It wouldn't be long now before they could move in together.

It didn't take Crowley long to notice signs of agitation in his angel.  
"It's just – it's so difficult to choose," Aziraphale said, when he was finally cornered into admitting there was something wrong. "I mean – I do seem to have accumulated an awful lot of books I don't think I could bear to part with, over the centuries."  
"S'all right, angel," Crowley said. "That's why we chose a big cottage, remember? Lots of room for bookshelves. Books in every room if you want."  
"Well, maybe not the kitchen – though I do have a few cookbooks that I should remember to pack...."  
Crowley sighed dramatically. "Look, why don't I just fuck off for a few days and leave you to it? Can't be easy to choose with me looking over your shoulder all the time."  
"Are – are you sure? I don't want you to think you aren't welcome...."  
Crowley smiled fondly. "I don't think I'll ever think that again, angel," he said. "We've got plenty of time before the cottage is empty. You just – take your time, and pack whatever you want, okay?"

Aziraphale sighed as the Bentley pulled away from the kerb. It would make things a lot easier if the demon wasn't there, but he found it very difficult now to stay apart, even for a few days. Still, there was always the telephone if they should need to talk....

Some of his choices were easy. All of the Bibles were coming with him. Likewise the books of prophesy. Some of them had been personally signed to him, after all.  
Then there was the Shakespeare – even Desert Island Discs on the radio thought that the Bible and Shakespeare were essential (or the sacred book of the guest of the week's choosing).  
After that, it got a bit more difficult.  
Looking over his collection – really looking at it, and deciding what to keep and what to leave – made Aziraphale come to some slightly unpalatable conclusions about his reading habits.  
He had always read for comfort, of course, and the opening of his bookshop had coincided with the publication of so many splendid authors that it had been easy to become unadventurous in his choices. Then, at some point around the First World War, he'd just stopped. Up until then he'd been keeping up with new authors and new publications. After the War he'd just stuck to what he liked. He'd collected the War poets, and tried TS Eliot and Houseman – A Shropshire Lad was rather reminiscent of the earlier nature poets – but he found he couldn't warm to Auden, or Stephen Spender and their contemporaries in the same way.  
It was the same with literature. Novels after the War had changed, and there had been far too many of them to really keep up with, and he no longer moved in the sort of circles where he met authors like Wilde and dear Ernest Hornung, and Conan Doyle. There were a few early twentieth century favourites – Dorothy Sayers, Georgette Heyer, some of Daphne du Maurier, and even some Jean Plaidy, which partially balanced out all the male authors he had been reading in the nineteenth century (oh, but Mrs Gaskell was so good – he loved Cranford, and Jane Austen, of course, and the Brontes....).  
He had collected very little of the literature of countries other than England (well, apart from Mark Twain, and Alexander Dumas, and that Canadian Stephen Leacock was quite amusing – and did Walter Scott count as the literature of another country, being Scottish?) and he was dimly aware that there were whole genres of literature he'd hardly tried at all. It was so difficult to know where to start, so he'd just stuck to what he knew.  
Which meant, of course, that the bookshop contained only a very narrow selection of literature that was now available. It hadn't bothered him up until now that the type of books he stocked really only appealed to a certain type of clientele, but there were so many different kinds of people living in London now, from so many different countries, and they all had their own classic literature that he hadn't even begun to sample.  
Maybe it was time to do something about that.

A week went by, and a second week. When Aziraphale finally called Crowley, the demon answered the phone on the first ring.  
"Can we meet," Aziraphale asked diffidently, "somewhere that isn't the bookshop? That nice pub round the corner, maybe? There's something I need to speak to you about."

Crowley was there in fifteen minutes, to find Aziraphale already sitting at one of the small tables with a pint of stout in front of him. "What's all this about, angel? You know we don't need to have secret meetings any more."  
Aziraphale smiled, but it was a little, worried smile. He waited as Crowley brought his own pint to the table, and sipped at his stout.  
"I've been thinking about the bookshop," he said, as Crowley folded himself into the chair beside him.   
"I thought you were going to sell it?" Crowley said.   
"Yes, well, about that...."  
"You're not going to sell it."  
"Not exactly, no."  
Crowley felt something coil into knots in his gut. "You – you do still want the cottage?"  
Aziraphale reached across the table and patted Crowley's hand. "Oh, dear boy, of course I still want the cottage. I want to spend as much time as I possibly can with you – make up for all that lost time – but...."  
"But." Crowley leaned back in his chair, trying not to show his disappointment on his face. "You want to spend time at the bookshop too."  
"You see, I started thinking, when I was deciding which books to pack." Aziraphale wriggled in his seat unhappily. "Remember when the Pride parade came past, and all I had to put in the window to celebrate it were some plays of dear Oscar's and The Well of Loneliness? I didn't even have any of Kenneth Williams' memoirs, and there's nearly a whole century of gay authors that I just haven't been aware of. And there are people from so many different countries living in London now, and they all have literature of their own, and I'm afraid I've sadly neglected anything that wasn't English or, at a pinch, American – but all sorts of people read books. And all sorts of people write books – people who once wouldn't have been able to get through a publisher's door...."  
"Wait a minute! Are you talking about making the bookshop into a centre for gay literature or something?"  
"I was thinking more of a cross between Gay's The Word and The Second Shelf, with West Indian authors, and authors from the Indian sub-continent, and...."[1]  
"This is a fine time to tell me that you actually want to sell books!" Crowley said.   
"Please don't be upset!"  
"Not upset, me. This is my not upset face."  
"We both know that isn't true." Aziraphale took a deep breath. "I do want to run away with you, and live in the cottage. I will run away with you and live in the cottage. And – and – maybe it would be better if I just showed you?"  
Crowley drained his pint glass – he was pretty sure he was going to need alcohol to deal with whatever stunt Aziraphale thought he was pulling – and followed the angel out of the pub.

When they stepped into the bookshop, the first thing Crowley noticed was the pile of boxes near the door, and the empty shelves beyond them. "So – these are the books I want to take with me," Aziraphale said, "and - "  
"Mr Fell! You brought your friend after all!"  
A young black woman appeared from the back room – the back room where the couch was, and where humans had no right to be, as far as Crowley was concerned. She was smiling broadly.  
"Lola, this is Crowley. Crowley – this is my new shop manager."  
Crowley turned very deliberately and stared at Aziraphale. "You're employing staff now?" he asked. "You've never employed staff!"  
Aziraphale smiled fondly at Crowley, and then at Lola. "Two of them, in fact," he said. "Like us, Lola and Samantha come as a pair. And they're not exactly staff," he went on.   
"Mr. Fell is our landlord," Lola said. "We've just bought the business – and the name. We thought it was important to keep the name."  
Another black woman bobbed up from behind the pile of boxes. This one was pleasantly plump and wore big round glasses with pink frames. "Nice to meet you, Mr Crowley! Mr Fell's told us so much about you!"  
"Has he really?" Crowley murmured, with an incredulous glance at Aziraphale.   
"Nothing that's not fit for public consumption, my dear," Aziraphale said, innocently. "These two delightful young ladies are going to modernise!"   
Lola grinned. "I think that's code for 'bring the bookshop kicking and screaming out of the nineteenth century'," she said. "We'll be getting everything online, to start with, when we get the new computer." She glanced, with a slight wince, at the old Amstrad tucked in on one of the shelves near the till. "And a credit card machine, of course."  
"I think we'll keep the till, though," Samantha chimed in. "We want to keep some of the original ambience, after all."  
"They have such a lot of knowledge," Aziraphale went on, more enthusiastically, "and they came along at just the right time...."  
"Amazing," Crowley murmured, in tones that suggested it really wasn't. Privately, he suspected ineffability – but if this was the form it was going to take, and it made his angel happy, it seemed harmless enough.  
"We were both studying English Lit at Uni," Samantha said, leaning across the pile of boxes. "We bonded over all the pale, stale and male dead guys."  
"And what we really wanted to do was to start a bookshop with all the other literature that isn't pale, stale and male," Lola went on.  
It was quite adorable, really, Crowley thought, now he was getting used to the idea. They even finished each others sentences.  
Aziraphale looked apologetic. "Yes, I'm afraid there is rather a lot of that sort of thing in the shop at the moment," he said. "That's why I need help," he explained, to Crowley. "I don't know where to start with modern authors who aren't – well,' pale, stale and male' – but they do, and I think a bookshop that stocks some of this new literature will do some real good. After all, everybody should be welcome in a bookshop, and there should be something to suit everyone's tastes in literature." He paused and looked at Crowley uncertainly. "Don't you think?"  
"And you wouldn't be fussing round here all the time instead of coming off with me?" Crowley asked.  
"Oh, strictly hands off," Aziraphale said. "Though I will expect regular parcels containing books that you think I would appreciate," he added, to Lola. "I do intend to become more adventurous in my reading." He smiled fondly at Crowley. "You see, I don't need comfort reading any more. I have something better to comfort me now."

**Author's Note:**

> [1] Gay's the Word is the oldest LGBT bookshop in London, and The Second Shelf specialises in books by and about women and non-binary people.


End file.
